Life's Little Mysteries that I will never Understand

1. How (no matter how it's pulled back) a piece of my hair always manages to get into everything I cook.

2. Why anyone enjoys cleaning.

3. My student's fascination with rap music.

4. Why the workweek isn't 2 days and the weekend 5 days.

5. How to use a melon "baller" (don't know the technical term).

6. How time on a Tuesday drags on and on but Saturdays fly by

7. Why spiders exists.

8. How guys can lose 10 pounds by not drinking pop for a week but a girl needs to work out 30 minutes every day and starve herself to lose 2 pounds in a week.

9. Why showers don't come with built in radios.

10. Why anyone actually enjoys mowing the law

11. Why my family refuses to play Dutch Blitz with me (I mean, just because I win every time!)

12. How to break a bad habit you've had since you were 8.

13. Why I can have all my laundry done and still have socks without matches.

14. How redecorating 1 small room in your house can brighten up your whole week.

15. Why someone hasn't invented a pill that works as a full meal so we don't have to waste so much time cooking, eating, and cleaning up after dinner.

16. Why every make over show thinks a women is only beautiful if she cuts her hair short.

17. Why the game Diner Dash is so addicting.

18. How a perfectly clean house can be trashed again in a matter of days.

19. How anyone can remember what they wore yesterday when the hang it back up in their closet.

20. How coming up with 19 things for this list was easy but coming up with #20 was so hard.

21. Why I have to have everything be a even number

22. see, I told you - I have an issue with odd numbers. Why is that?

Greeting from Arizona!

Greetings from Arizona. Last Thursday night I left the cold, deary, 28 degree Michigan and landed myself (with a weird pit stop in Atlanta) in balmy 88 degree Arizona. After many days of sunshine and relaxation I am finally ready to share my peace and happiness with the greater world. It really is too bad that I have to fly home and a couple of days - well, to be factual -- it's durn near depressing. La La- anyways, so I've loved the sunshine, loved the days filled of NOTHING, and don't want to go home. I decided if I can make a perfect combination of Bay City and Phoenix then I could be happy. So, here is my perfect combination....

From Phoenix I need:
1. Maryann (yes, she has to be first)
2. The weather this time of year (between 70-90 --- I could live with that year round!)
3. The restaurants (so many more choices here. You've never had a milkshake until you go to Sonic)

From Bay City I need:
1. The rest of the family - mom,dad, Adam, Bob, Kayleen and the most important Mikayla.
2. The scenery (sorry, I don't find Arizona desert as pretty as Michigan green)
3. no, I guess that's all I really need from Bay City

Yeah - put all that stuff in the same location and I will be happy as a lark.

All Alone

It's official For the first time since moving out of my parents house a year and half ago, I officially live on my own. My brother moved out over the weekend to move in with a friend so I suddenly find myself all alone. It's not too bad so far though. I am currently sitting in my "office" or "the room formally known as Adam's room." It's kind of nice to spread out and get my hands on all the storage space in this room (you know the pack rat I am). So, since Saturday I have been looking at the benefits of living alone vs. living with my bro. Here is what I have come up with so far.

Good things about living alone

1. You don't sit down in the bathroom to find that the toilet paper roll is empty or go to get a glass a milk and find it all gone.

2. More space for all my STUFF - and you know I have lots of meaningless stuff.

3. You don't have to close doors when changing/showering etc.. No one is here so who cares!

4. You can turn music up as loud as you want at any point during the day.

5. You don't have to worry about something missing from the fridge when you go to cook it.

6. Less laundry, less dishes

7. Temperature control in the house doesn't have to find a compromise between 2 peoples preferences.

8. No more driving on the grass to avoid hitting his car every morning.

Bad things about living alone (or in my case minus my little bro)

1. No one to mow my lawn - although he technically claims that he will come back and do it every other week for me (I'm not holding my breathe).

2. I can go a whole day without ever talking to a single breathing soul (scary)

3. No one to talk hockey or books with or just have randomly weird conversations with.

4. No one randomly doing the dishes for me when he notices that I haven't had a chance to do them in a couple of days (I miss that already)

5. No one paying me rent

6. No one to remind me that I do need to take care of housekeeping responsibilities from time to time.

7. No one to sing on the top of his lungs while walking through the house (an endearing trait most of the time)

8. Knowing that I have to make sure the doors are locked and the lights are all off before I go to bed because no one else will do it if I forget.

So, overall it's a spilt decision. While there are things I enjoy about living all alone, there are some things that I will definitely miss from having my little bro with me. Let's face it, I lived with him for every year of his life (almost 27) so this is a little odd, not having him around. Hey, but on the bright side, we made a deal when he left that if it didn't work out, he could come back. I guess maybe I shouldn't have moved so much furniture around. :)

I AM SO STUPID!

This is such a fitting title for my official 100th post.

I am so stupid though, honestly - that is the truth. In case you doubt, let me share with you the reason why.

My masters class tonight was individual meetings with my professor to discuss our horrid research papers. I scheduled mine so I could go after my staff meeting at school (which I usually miss because of class). Well, the staff meeting was cancelled so I was stuck in Saginaw for 2.5 hours with nothing to do. Anyways, to make a long story even longer I ended my Saginaw exploring adventures with a quick supper stop at Tropical Smoothie cafe where I happily drank my Peaches n' Silk smoothie as I drove to SVSU.

Come on people - this is me -- did you expect this to be short and sweet?

Okay - so I juggled all my stuff out of the car and went inside (keep in mind, the smoothie was the most important thing). Had my meeting blah, blah, blah. Went to leave.

couldn't find my keys ANYWHERE!

Searched through my purse, emptied the contents of it all over the stairs at SVSU and still couldn't find them. Needless to say, I am panicking.

Finally I went to my car - assuming I managed to somehow leave them on my front seat, hopefully under my school bag. I get to my car and see that my keys are STILL IN THE IGNITION! I was so worried about my smoothie, I never TOOK THEM OUT OF THE IGNITION! This is in Saginaw people! High crime problems - yes, I was in an SVSU parking lot but near the back of it, not by a lamp post, and I haven't seen a security guard on the campus in well over a year - especially by the education building which is isolated from the rest of campus.

So, what can I say. I am stupid! But luckily I have a higher power watching over me and keeping me safe, even when I do stupid things!

PS: Purple for your 100th post is a must!

Happy Birthday to ME!

Happy birthday to me!
I ate too much at Mongolian Barbecue.
I spent all my birthday money on amazon.com
and still forgot to buy the 1 DVD I really wanted!

(yeah - that doesn't work to the tune of the song, but I tried anyway)

So, another year gone by, another year closer to 30. But technically I stopped counting at 25 so I really had my 4th - 25th birthday (figure that one out people!).

There is something about turning 25 that makes no one want to be any older. Getting closer to 30 just sounds so much older. I am not mature enough to be this old.

I am going to celebrate my birthday by working on an incredibly long and boring paper for my research class. Yippee.

Birthdays when you were little were much more fun. Presents, going out to eat (which my family only used to do on birthdays), getting excited about being a year closer to a teenager or getting my license, or being able to vote, or being able to drink (not that I do much - but it's the principal of the thing).

Now days, a birthday is just another day on the calendar and another excuse to eat chocolate, write a blog, and avoid all my school work.

So, happy birthday to me!
I wish I was someplace warm!
I want to skip school tomorrow!
I think I just might!

O the weather outside is frightful

The weather outside is frightfully cold but I haven't noticed because I haven't had to go to work for the past three days!

Almost every school in our entire area (minus Midland - why, we don't know) was closed on Monday and Tuesday due to extreme cold. They all gave up and went back to school today (including Pinconning - who usually closes when a single snowflake is on the ground!)

That is except for Saginaw Public - we are out for the third day straight.

The reason - well my brilliant school district was built around neighborhood schools so they wouldn't have to worry about busing. The only people bused in our district are special education students. Therefore the majority of our students walk to school in Saginaw and the temperatures have been reading below 0 for the past 3 days.

Usually we are the school district that stays open through everything - if we get 1 snow day a year, we count it as a miracle! Now we've had three in a row and after one more, we will have to start making them up. That is UNHEARD of in Saginaw. It's seriously never happened before.

So, I plan on enjoying this sudden mid-winter break to the fullest today and think fondly of those that had to return to work today or moved so far away from this nasty coldness that they have no hope of a snow day ever!

Have a great day everyone! I know I am! :)

Oh what a night

This past Tuesday was one of the strangest and longest days of my life. It started off with me finding out that one of my kids (the worst behaved one) was moving!! Yeah!! I am down to 27!! It ended with me getting to bed at about 2:30 Wednesday morning. Here is why.

Mom and Dad were gone at Woodhaven so I enjoyed a quiet evening at home (you really didn't think I could write a short version of this). I was happily getting ready to climb into bed for the first time in weeks before 10:30 when the phone rang. It was my mom, panicked, trying to track down Adam - she said the basement was flooded, the hot water heater ruined. Needless to say, I got redressed and headed over to my parents. For those of you who don't know, my parents have a nice, long, ranch house with an equally long and finished basement. I walked downstairs and it was a sea of water (not ankle deep, but definently a LOT of water).

As you can see, this is what the entire basement looked like. Keep in mind, my mom is a pre-school teacher and a former daycare owner. We have a TON of stuff in that basement. However, my mom is also the queen of rubbermaid containers so I don't think any of her stuff got ruined. I still had stuff on the floor that I hadn't moved to my house yet, luckily I lost very little. The person hardest hit was my dad, who hadn't cleaned out his work room in a long time, and had a huge mess to clean up. (which Mom, Adam and I got drafted to do of course) :)

So for three hours we cleaned, moved things to the garage, and I don't think Bob ever stopped running a wet vac all over the floor. It was Dad, Mom, Bob, Adam, and I until 2 in the morning. We also discovered that Maryann's bedroom in the basement at Mom & Dad's was hit too, so we pulled up all that carpet yet Tuesday night. Being that we all had to work the next morning, we were running on fumes by 2:00.

Please note the image on your left. It may not look significant but it is. You see, my father has NEVER (literally) thrown out any piece of computer equipment he has ever bought. So Adam and I had to spend a considerable amount of time getting all of that off the floor and on a shelf. Notice the weights in between the computers. I was holding the monitor while Adam was putting up the CPU unit when he "accidentally" knocked one of them off. He warned me about 1/2 a millisecond before it slammed on top of my foot. Despite the fact that I either broke or fractured a couple of toes, he found it hilarious and continued to giggle every time he thought of it for the next 1/2 hour. Being that this was 1 in the morning, he is lucky I let him come home that night. The sister in me wanted to return the favor and laugh at him and see how he liked it, but the angel on my shoulder won out and I let him live.

So, needless to say I was DRAGGING at school the next day (thank heavens for my student teacher). Of course, it didn't help that I slept through my alarm and didn't wake up until 7:20 (which is the latest possible time I ever leave for school!) Dad and our friend Ken from church along with his son Stan spent Wednesday morning ripping up the rest of the carpet in the basement. They literally were sweeping buckets and buckets worth of water towards the drain in the old laundry room. You can see below how much water was left after they pulled up the carpet, even after they had vacuumed the carpet so many times. Taking the carpet out of the house was an adventure because it dripped so much as they went, they made a skating rink on our driveway.

So, the morals of the story:

1. Rubbermaid containers are lifesavers when your basement floods.

2. Always turn your cell phone off by 10 on a school night.

3. Never help your brother lift anything near any weights.

4. It is not a good think when your hot water heater breaks.

5. This can probably be worked in a story that I am writing - so I guess from trials can come great creativity.

6. I cannot function on 4 hours of sleep.

So, my project today and Monday (Happy B-day Dr. King, thanks for no school) is to work on cleaning my basement because if this would have happened in my house --- OH BOY! I can't even imagine!